Drum Improv started with, as you can imagine, a drum improvisation. I’ve always felt that I was a drummer in another lifetime. It’s how I hear music, it’s how I process music. From an early age I would think as a drummer. I used my teeth as a drum kit, with the back right side of my teeth being the kick and the front left the snare. It’s amazing how many beats you can get out of clicking, dragging and rolling your teeth around in your mouth. Probably not the most normal thing in the world, but I didn’t care. And yes, if you are wondering, I did get made fun of for this as a child.

Drums are melodic. They are expressive. They are poetic.

I’ve lived many lives musically. I was classically trained as a child, and I was a student of jazz during the most formative years of my life, and I’ve always had rock and roll at my core. This song is a product of all of those years and experiences. I improvised the drums as a one pass free think. A true Audio Journal. Then I picked up the guitar, tuned it, set up a track to record on, and pressed record. The drums responding to themselves. The guitar following the drums’ lead. I improvised a chord progression, feel, and timing. Each performance was a one through pass with no edits.

Later I decided to add the Korg MS-20 to pull on the acoustic nature of the drums and guitar. My hope was to give them perspective, almost like a person standing in a panoramic landscape shot of a mountain. We never really know how big a landscape is without a frame of reference. Hopefully the dark synthetic nature of the Korg reminds people of how simple this composition truly is.

On a technical note, the drums are not acoustic drums, they were created using Native Instruments Abbey Roads vintage drummer. The guitar was recorded direct using the Universal Audio Fender 55’ Tweed Deluxe.